Linguistic gems you won’t find in a dictionary

If anything that eats is an “eater”, then whatever it eats must be an “eatee”. I gather this linguistic gemstone from our own newspapers.

Indeed, I must agree that “eatee” is a handy little word for all the dainty things for which we lick our lips in any restaurant. The problem is that I cannot find it in any of my dictionaries.

But, apparently, our journalists and other graduates of our education system have been taught that whenever the doer is a word with an “er” or “or” ending, then the doee — the receiver of the action — must end with an “ee”. And so — thanks to the “donor community” — all our esteemed newspapers are happy to inform their readers that a country like Kenya is a “donee”.

PASS EXAMS

No, I am not a seer. I don’t have the “inner eye” with which William Wordsworth saw his daffodils. Nevertheless, I often see good-looking girls along the street — excellent “seeees”.

If I had not been a good teachee, I would not have paid such heed to my teachers as to pass all my exams with flying colours. That, I can tell you, is why those who heeded the preacher Peter Karanja voted to a man against the new Constitution. More pious preachees God has never received in his heaven.

But ours is not a loser-take-all system. What about the overwhelming number of voters who voted for the constitution itself? Who in his right senses can say that the constitution was not a successful votee in its own right?

By the same token, the drivers or our roads cannot be blamed alone for the dedication with which they smash our bones. The drivees — the Nissans and other road contraptions — are as rickety as any other machine tailor-made for the bone-crushing industry.

TRAFFIC POLICEMEN

Our reporters are keenly aware of this fact. But the reportees include the ramshackles, touts, drivers and traffic policemen. And the imaginary dotted line between the policeman’s eyes and the arrested driver’s pocket uncannily resembles the dotted line which Mr Smythe used to draw between Andy Capp’s eyes and Flo’s open handbag.

Since it is the product of a drawer, that line is an illustrious drawee. But the money inside the bag is also in grave danger of becoming a drawee — since, clearly, Andy Capp is a committed drawer from that handbag. This is speculation.

But my friend, the drawer Gado, will affirm that his sketches are drawees. Mwai Kibaki and his boon friend Raila Odinga might learn perennial lessons from this. It is that, as rulers, they must always put their ears to the ground if they really want to know what the rulees — you and I and those who merely stand and state — think of their coalition.

From customers, we have customees and from robbers, we have robbees. But the keen language student will make his own list of language lawbreakers and language law-breakees, and the editor of any daily will be glad to tick it as correct.

Philip Ochieng is a veteran journalist